The Indiana State House Sign Bill to Allow Farmers to Grow Industrial Hemp

The House of the State of Indian signed a bill that will allow farmers in the state to grow cannabis’s non-psychoactive cousin, the industrial hemp plant. Currently only the Purdue University has the proper license to grow hemp via a pilot program, that was permitted to grow hemp for research purposes because of the 2014 Farm Bill. House Bill 137 will allow farmers across the state to grow industrial hemp for commercial purposes. Now the fate of the bill is in the state Senates hands.

It was only last year that the Indiana’s House and Senate both voted in favor of the legalization of Cannabidiol (CBD), which can be extracted from the hemp plant, for patients with epilepsy. In December 2017, the World Health Organization released a research report on CBD. The organization found the chemical compound, “shows that its use could have some therapeutic value for seizures due to epilepsy and related conditions. Current evidence also shows that Cannabidiol is not likely to be abused or create dependence.”

Also, just recently, GW Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: GWPH) announced that the company’s New Drugs Application had been accepted by the FDA for priority review. “Epidiolex® (cannabidiol or CBD), an investigational treatment for seizures associated with Lennox-Gastaut syndrome (LGS) and Dravet syndrome, two rare and difficult to treat conditions of childhood-onset epilepsy.”